[erlang-questions] Style wars: junk comments

[Bengt Kleberg]

It would surprise me if a module with a small number of objects is more
difficult to navigate if the objects are in alphabetical order.

The idea of having a visual convention to help navigate across modules
sound very interesting. Any examples?


bengt

On Wed, 2012-09-12 at 15:47 +0200, Alexandre Aguiar wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> As far as I am not an Erlang expert, some ideas discussed here are not peculiar to Erlang.
> 
> Bengt Kleberg <bengt.kleberg@REDACTED> escreveu:
> >If you expect your code to be read/reviewed when printed, you should
> >have the functions alphabetically ordered.
> >Grouping exported/internal functions also help the reviewers.
> 
> Alphabetical order may or may not help. Modular code produces modules with small number of objects that can be efficiently visually navigated. The relationship between how efficiently and the number of objects, AFAIK, is undetermined.
> 
> Some convention to ease navigation accross different modules would be more sensible and worthwhile, IMVVVHO, of course.
> 
> >> On 12 September 2012 09:56, Richard O'Keefe <ok@REDACTED>
> >> that repeats something immediately obvious
> 
> Obviousness is a function of familiarity. I often see this in software documentation that is obvious for the author. :-) 
> 
> Style is not about aesthetics. It is about discipline. And discipline is about standards. Navigating a module with a previously known internal organization is far more efficient. Several languages have (or had) structural rules for their codings. 
> 
> Some tags and comments work as markups that can ease learning and navigating by working as coding standards. Besides, disk space is not expensive today. :-)  Not to mention that such standard markups will be essential for future implementation of cross module indexing systems and other indexing mechanisms.
> 
> My 2 cents.
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Alexandre
>